Home > Opinion > Will 3D make TV and films less accessible?
Damon Rose
Ouch editor Damon Rose has been submersed in disability culture since 1996, working as Assistant Producer on Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú2's From The Edge, Radio 4's In Touch, alt performance poetry and freelance writing. He is also co-founder of the cult website
Will 3D make TV and films less accessible?
15th November 2009
Ouch's editor gives a personal history of 3D television broadcasts and fears for the future of storytelling.
Oh no, it's coming back to taunt me again. 3D appears to be all the rage with Channel 4 this week embarking on an entire season around it and Disney's new animated adaptation of A Christmas Carol in 3D (featuring Jim Carey as Scrooge and not a scottish duck this time) at the top of the cinema charts. But Damon, you're blind, just leave it, you can't even see 2D, this is someone else's issue, these aren't the droids you're looking for. Unfortunately I believe it really could have an unforseen impact on visually impaired people.
In 1984 I lost my sight. But in 1982, when I was 11, I still had plenty and was extremely excited when ITV's popular science show The Real World decided to treat the eyes and brains of the nation to a 3D TV experiment. What could be more fascinating to a slightly geeky media obsessive like me?
I bought a copy of TV Times and unstuck the free pair of special cardboard glasses off the front cover. One lens was green, the other red. When 7 o'clock came around, the TV show started, and I sat down to see what I could see.
They showed a few home-made 3D sequences. One of them was a rather sad looking fake bull in a china shop heading towards the camera. Without the 3D glasses on I saw the animal with a red and green halo around it. But with the glasses on I saw ... not very much. What was going on?
I've not yet shared with you the fact I didn't have full vision even back then: I could only see with one eye so the multi dimensional experience was lost on me. If I had the green lens over my good eye, everything looked green and if I swapped it over to look through the red lens ... well it all looked red didn't it. Did you guess?
I did have a go at folding the green lens onto the red llens to look through both at once to see if that would help. It created an interesting brown colour if you held it up to the light but it made no difference to the flatness of the screen. It didn't, how do you say ... jump out at me.
In 1984 I lost my sight. But in 1982, when I was 11, I still had plenty and was extremely excited when ITV's popular science show The Real World decided to treat the eyes and brains of the nation to a 3D TV experiment. What could be more fascinating to a slightly geeky media obsessive like me?
I bought a copy of TV Times and unstuck the free pair of special cardboard glasses off the front cover. One lens was green, the other red. When 7 o'clock came around, the TV show started, and I sat down to see what I could see.
They showed a few home-made 3D sequences. One of them was a rather sad looking fake bull in a china shop heading towards the camera. Without the 3D glasses on I saw the animal with a red and green halo around it. But with the glasses on I saw ... not very much. What was going on?
I've not yet shared with you the fact I didn't have full vision even back then: I could only see with one eye so the multi dimensional experience was lost on me. If I had the green lens over my good eye, everything looked green and if I swapped it over to look through the red lens ... well it all looked red didn't it. Did you guess?
I did have a go at folding the green lens onto the red llens to look through both at once to see if that would help. It created an interesting brown colour if you held it up to the light but it made no difference to the flatness of the screen. It didn't, how do you say ... jump out at me.
I was still very young and hadn't quite realised that being monocular meant I wasn't experiencing 3D in daily life either, so I wasn't miraculously going to start getting it via my TV now was I. Oh and that's why I was rubbish at rounders too apparently, why didn't someone say something at the time ... I thought that having two eyes meant you saw everything twice!
3D was everywhere in 1982. Eagle magazine started doing still images which stood off the page. ITV showed a rubbish spaghetti western one Sunday afternoon featuring cowboys ringed in red an green. My favourite comic llaunched a character called Freddie 3D for whom poster images came to life and Dennis Quaid starred in the third film of the famous shark franchise - Jaws 3-D. Everyone who could see the effect wasn't particularly wowed by it, but I really really wanted to be part of the craze. I was rather glad when it didn't catch on.
The viewing method from the 80s and some earlier experiments, is known as ColourCode 3D and it's what Channel 4 are resurrecting today but with blue and amber lenses just to be contrary - how very them.
So how does it work? To cut a long story short, it attempts to show the left eye a slightly different image to that of the right eye to approximate depth: the third dimension presently missing on a flat screen. It's a little different to the new 3D technology and, because you're having to look through coloured gels, it makes colour television less colourful as colour-blocking is part of the magic which makes it work. As is having two functioning eyes, I should add.
3D was everywhere in 1982. Eagle magazine started doing still images which stood off the page. ITV showed a rubbish spaghetti western one Sunday afternoon featuring cowboys ringed in red an green. My favourite comic llaunched a character called Freddie 3D for whom poster images came to life and Dennis Quaid starred in the third film of the famous shark franchise - Jaws 3-D. Everyone who could see the effect wasn't particularly wowed by it, but I really really wanted to be part of the craze. I was rather glad when it didn't catch on.
The viewing method from the 80s and some earlier experiments, is known as ColourCode 3D and it's what Channel 4 are resurrecting today but with blue and amber lenses just to be contrary - how very them.
So how does it work? To cut a long story short, it attempts to show the left eye a slightly different image to that of the right eye to approximate depth: the third dimension presently missing on a flat screen. It's a little different to the new 3D technology and, because you're having to look through coloured gels, it makes colour television less colourful as colour-blocking is part of the magic which makes it work. As is having two functioning eyes, I should add.
Flash forward 27 years. I can no longer see, and the greatest advance in television for me has been the introduction of audio description (AD) - the accessibility system for visually impaired viewers which became widely available to UK homes in 2004 thanks to Sky. AD uses the gaps between dialogue to broadcast extra info about the on-screen visuals so you can follow the narrative. The rest of the world, however, are at it again.
TV and film companies have developed a new way of delivering the third dimension to us. The trick is still all about showing each eye a slightly different image using a filtering method but this time you will have to buy a new kind of television set. Though still a flat screen, the pixcel lens technology on the surface projects two images out at slightly different angles - one intended for the left eye, the other the right.
You will still need to wear special glasses; if you don't, then you'll see a horrible blurry double vision ghosting. What the glasses do is to deliver the offset images one eye at a time in rapid succession by speedily blocking one eye then the other so each sees separate images and thus depth. The 3d is created in your brain, not in front of you in the living room or theatre. It's a trick! Did that make sense?
Annoyingly for some visually impaired people, or those with one eye, you'll still have to wear the glasses to notionally block out one eye's worth of telly so that it looks like the good old fashioned 2D we have now, else you'll be watching the double image I described. Bit of a pain when you get no benefit from it but glasses-free 3D TV is on its way, apparently as are sets with a 2D button.
TV and film companies have developed a new way of delivering the third dimension to us. The trick is still all about showing each eye a slightly different image using a filtering method but this time you will have to buy a new kind of television set. Though still a flat screen, the pixcel lens technology on the surface projects two images out at slightly different angles - one intended for the left eye, the other the right.
You will still need to wear special glasses; if you don't, then you'll see a horrible blurry double vision ghosting. What the glasses do is to deliver the offset images one eye at a time in rapid succession by speedily blocking one eye then the other so each sees separate images and thus depth. The 3d is created in your brain, not in front of you in the living room or theatre. It's a trick! Did that make sense?
Annoyingly for some visually impaired people, or those with one eye, you'll still have to wear the glasses to notionally block out one eye's worth of telly so that it looks like the good old fashioned 2D we have now, else you'll be watching the double image I described. Bit of a pain when you get no benefit from it but glasses-free 3D TV is on its way, apparently as are sets with a 2D button.
So, let's analyse. As if television wasn't visual enough, those darn scientists have gone and created an extradimension in which directors can have their fun. AD might be here now but I figure this could be the turning point at which blind people might start losing interest. For me a good film is about the story and I fear this is the end of the road for that. It seems I'm in good company as film critic Mark Kermode agrees with me if last Thursday's Culture Show is anything to go by.
Scripted dialogue is surely going to disappear in favour of ever more ambitious CGI and effects. They'll turn into video games without the interactivity. For visually impaired people, the more spoken content there is in a film, the better it is. The more complex the plot, the more interesting. A further point to note is that if a film barely has any dialogue in it, then it's also barely worth audio describing; if the actors don't talk, it's like being told about a film you weren't at.
In the early days, films and TV were heavy with the spoken word and directors were often criticised that they didn't understand the medium better and needed to work on getting the visuals to tell the story. Beautifully accessible to blind people, the 'Talkies' were like radio with pictures. I have to wonder if film crews will even remember to take the microphones with them in a few years time.
Scripted dialogue is surely going to disappear in favour of ever more ambitious CGI and effects. They'll turn into video games without the interactivity. For visually impaired people, the more spoken content there is in a film, the better it is. The more complex the plot, the more interesting. A further point to note is that if a film barely has any dialogue in it, then it's also barely worth audio describing; if the actors don't talk, it's like being told about a film you weren't at.
In the early days, films and TV were heavy with the spoken word and directors were often criticised that they didn't understand the medium better and needed to work on getting the visuals to tell the story. Beautifully accessible to blind people, the 'Talkies' were like radio with pictures. I have to wonder if film crews will even remember to take the microphones with them in a few years time.
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Comments
I can't see 3D images because of Astigmatism.
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This is yet another example of what seems to be a general move towards all things visual where audible is at best unnecessary and at worst annoying. I don't understand this constant idea that visuals have to be stunning and sound is not important. Why this move to only one of our senses?
Why the removal of audible information? Today station announcements, tomorrow TV?
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I've got a squint and one lazy eye. Went to see 'up' in the 3D, using the newer Buddy Holly style 3D glasses. It just looked...a bit darker.
First and last time for me seeing a 3D film, unless I'm forcebly dragged along.
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I remember having a pair of 3D glasses myself Damon! They were wierd even for a normal sightie like me! But the surreal thing? Went to Birmingham's national Sea Life Centre in August and they had a 4D cinema, which was even more surreal than 3D as it looked as if whales and dolphins were right up close to you! And it was a sensorama cinema too, which meant they could squirt water and make sea air to you!
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As I understand it, the new 3D system involving shutter glasses actually transmits 2 regular high def video streams. Video compression works by exploiting frame-to-frame similarities; it relies on things not changing very much from one frame to another. Of course, if you're sending a left and a right stream, a LOT of the image will shift every frame (otherwise there won't be a lot of 3Dness and hence not a lot of point). So there's actually two video streams, from two separate cameras and two separate encodings. All that happens at the end is that the decoder box sends them to the TV alternating the decoded frames. If you watch the 3D without the glasses it will indeed look blurred.
However, this is actually an improvement over the colour-encoded systems because it's hence a relatively simple thing for the receiver box to only decode one of the streams -- and in fact this is going to be something that people are going to want anyway.
For example, a pub showing the 'big match' is going to want to turn the 3D off, otherwise they'll have to give everyone glasses. TVs in other public places will be 2D only. There's also bound to be people with only 2D tvs who will want only one stream. People watching TV on their computers will only want 2D (I've got the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú news running in a window while I'm working; I don't want 3D glasses on though).
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Squint - therefore at time total double vision - ended up one red screen. one green screen - two for the price of one - suppose I was lucky I wasn't charged twice!!!!
Still suppose it's not much different to when I bought my now dear departed dad his first stereo headphones so he could at last - without Mum moaning about the noise - listen to all his favourite recordings - only to be told by him that one-side didn't work.
I turned them round only to hear him say 'Blimey, the other side's broken now'!!!
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Damon - I have a very bad lazy eye - so like when you were sighted as a child - 3D just doesn't work for me!
I remember as a kid being really upset cause my parents took me to some 3D roller coaster ride - I vividly remember pretending to feel like I was on the roller coaster and was moving with the screen - but in fact all I saw was a blue and red screen.
I seriously hope that they do not start rolling this out as a mainstream platform for TV. There are plenty of people who will really lose out if it does.
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